Day 287 - 1st Day of Advent

When we were children, we had advent calendars with small windows to open every day until Christmas Eve, then when we lived in Switzerland I can remember Kathryn making each child their own calendar, each with pockets filled with a small gift to increase the tension... Earlier this week, my daughter presented her mother with a Lindt calendar, each small door hiding an eponymous chocolate, and I have even seen whisky calendars for sale - a different shot to enjoy every day.  However you celebrate it, it is clear that the count down to Christmas has begun.

5 years ago today I see from my Facebook reminder that we were all under snow: how very different it was today!  Yes there was a breeze, gusty at times, but it was mild and even at one point sunny too.  All of which made for a very enjoyable day's disorganised golf today.  On this occasion there were 8 of us who met up at the club at 10:00.

One of the best innovations of late at Burhill has been the hiring so new course marshals.  Today it was Max who earned his money and our thanks!  He directed us away from the first tee on the Old, warning us that ahead of us would have been three four-balls from a society who had started late and were clearly struggling. Instead we set off from the 9th tee and cantered around.  I was in the first team, with the VC, Des and Chris. 

We started off slowly, amassing only 39 points on the first 9 we played, but a second half of 46 gave us a very respectable score. That we managed this was largely due to the brilliance of one of our players, Des: so much that we ran out of superlatives as yet another long putt was drained!  This score proved enough to win the match and we all enjoyed a very convivial drink, fuelled with stilton-covered chips and the requisite banter.

Afterwards, I had a meeting with Matthew the General Manager to prepare for tomorrow's Club Committee meeting and then tried to go home but got sidetracked into chatting with some of the Ladies who had been playing their own team competition that morning.

Kathryn was attending the Ladies Prizegiving in the early evening so that I got a chance to catch up on some of the many Masterchef episodes cluttering up our Sky+ box and then when she came home we set about booking flights fir next November - how's that for planning!